Prospect of peace

India and Pakistan have once again reiterated their resolve to move forward on Kashmir through "sustained, serious and constructive dialogue". This is what Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar said on his return from New Delhi after the latest round of foreign secretary-level talks.

This was only the beginning of the process of "composite dialogue", he said and hoped that "despite the present given stances of both the countries, there will be efforts to continue engaging in a substantive manner till the issue is resolved". He also cautioned against engaging in hype or building up high expectations.

In their joint statement issued after the New Delhi talks, the two sides reiterated "the hope that the dialogue will lead to peaceful settlement of all bilateral issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, to the satisfaction of both sides."

This expression of hope, however, sequentially follows a meaningful reference to the reassurance contained in the Islamabad joint press statement of January 6, 2004 on "carrying the process forward in an atmosphere free from terror and violence."

It would be recalled that the January 6 joint statement included a formulation which read: "Prime Minister Vajpayee said that in order to take forward and sustain the dialogue process, violence, hostility and terrorism must be prevented.

President Musharraf reassured Prime Minister Vajpayee that he would not permit any territory under Pakistan's control to be used to support terrorism in any manner. President Musharraf emphasized that a sustained and productive dialogue addressing all issues would lead to positive results."

India's new emphasis on the primacy of the Shimla Agreement is also evident in the latest joint statement which reaffirms the "determination" of both sides to implement the Shimla Agreement in letter and spirit.

Pakistan has tried to balance this exclusivity of Indian approach in addressing India-Pakistan bilateral relations by managing an accompanying reference to "their commitment to the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations."

The Shimla Agreement, signed under most difficult and painful circumstances in 1972, had expressed the resolve of the two countries to put "an end to the conflict and confrontation" that had marred their relations "and to work for the promotion of a friendly and harmonious relationship and establishment of durable peace in the subcontinent".

In order to achieve this objective, the two governments had agreed, inter alia, "to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them".

Pending final settlement of any of the problems between the two countries, "neither side shall unilaterally alter the situation and both shall prevent the organization, assistance or encouragement of any acts detrimental to the maintenance of peace and harmonious relations".

One must admit that the essence of the Shimla formulation is now part of the new "composite" approach in the resumed process of India-Pakistan normalization. Pakistan has undertaken not to allow any "terrorist act" from its territory.

India on its part has committed itself to a sustained dialogue that will (hopefully) "lead to peaceful settlement of all bilateral issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, to the satisfaction of both sides." Needless to stress that a final settlement of the Kashmir issue is now the only unimplemented provision of the Shimla Agreement.

President Musharraf has welcomed the outcome of the latest round of foreign secretary-level talks as a "good beginning" of the "engagement process" which he hoped would be sustained in order to make the "composite" dialogue result-oriented.

The Indian side was even more upbeat in its evaluation of the talks which it described as "very positive and constructive" and "a good and hopeful beginning of a process." Both sides, in an unprecedented manner, are also complementing each other for "sincerity of commitment."

These are positive vibes which every one would welcome, particularly in the aftermath of recent exchange of somewhat unpleasant rhetoric between New Delhi and Islamabad. Nobody expected any major decisions from the latest round of talks which besides their twin-agenda focus (Peace and security including CBMs and Jammu ad Kashmir) were meant to give final shape to the calendar of the meetings on the remaining six subjects, now scheduled to be held later this month.

In the context of Kashmir, no specific initiatives or proposals were expected to be launched at this preliminary stage of the "composite" dialogue. Whatever time of the two-day talks was devoted to Kashmir must have been used by both sides in reiterating their long-held positions on Kashmir.

This is a ritualistic exercise for which delegations from both sides always come fully prepared and show mutual indulgence and courtesy in accommodating each other's presentation as a matter of record.

According to independent reports from New Delhi, both sides restated their briefs underscoring their basic positions and concerns related to Kashmir. As always, Pakistan's case was predicated on the centrality of the Kashmir issue whereas "terrorism and violence" remained India' major concern.

What is important is that Kashmir remains on the agenda of the ongoing dialogue as drawn up in the June 23, 1997 Islamabad joint statement and did figure in the latest talks with both sides committing themselves to a "peaceful negotiated final settlement" of this core issue.

Both India and Pakistan, ever since their overt nuclearization, are under pressure from the world community to seek an end to their decades old legacy of animosity and conflict.

The current volatile environment in and around our region has deepened global stakes in early restoration of durable peace in South Asia. This would require genuine rapprochement between India and Pakistan which will come only through elimination of their basic disputes and issues.

India and Pakistan also owe it to themselves to overcome their bitter past and work together for a better future. There could be no better opportunity for them to turn a new leaf in their embittered history.

It is time they reorder their priorities to be able to divert their precious and limited resources from their wasteful arms race to economic development and social progress.

Both must realize that Kashmir has been the cause of full-scale wars between them and brought them almost to the brink of another war two years ago. This is an issue with grave regional and global security implications and must be addressed through legality and justice in conformity with the aspirations of the people of Kashmir. This would remain the key to genuine India-Pakistan rapprochement.

This process would inevitably require freshness of political approach on the part of the two countries. Numerous summit-level meetings over the last few years have, no doubt, generated a mutual consensus on the imperatives of peace and normalcy between the two nuclear capable states.

The most notable was the Lahore summit in February, 1999 which produced the Lahore Declaration as a major peacetime mutual undertaking covering the full spectrum of their bilateral relations and issues.

Now what next? A clear road map was drawn by President Musharraf in his press conference on January 6 stressing three main points inherent in the Islamabad Agreement: (i) need for a final settlement of the Kashmir issue; (ii) need for a "composite dialogue" to settle all issues, and (iii) the "linkage and simultaneity" in all the three areas of interest to both sides, namely, mutual consolidation of CBMs, initiation and progress of the "composite" dialogue, and Pakistan's assurance not to allow any territory under its control to be used to support terrorism in any manner.

Apparently, both sides are moving ahead as envisioned in this road map. The foreign secretaries who have already exhausted their standard briefs would now need a clear political direction to be able to probe the specifics of an "achievable" final settlement of the Kashmir issue.

At their first meeting in August as part of the "composite" dialogue, the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan will have an opportunity to add the requisite political dimension to the process of normalization and set in motion an engagement beyond reiteration of their respective declaratory positions. This would also require a serious effort in both countries to prepare their peoples for the "paradigm shift" in their Kashmir policies.

For fifty years, India and Pakistan have remained locked in a confrontational mode because of the Kashmir dispute which besides invoking intense feelings in their peoples is inextricably linked to peace and security of the region.

The historical experiences, cultural differences, religious fervour, scars of partition, wars and conflicts, Indian desire for regional domination and hegemony, liberation struggle in Kashmir and resurgence of violence and terrorism all come together in a curious convergence in the unresolved dispute of Kashmir.

The people in both countries have suffered for too long as a result of continuing tensions and conflicts and would want this episode to come to an end now. They would welcome any innovative approach that facilitates a "practical and achievable" solution of the Kashmir issue in keeping with the legitimate interests of India, Pakistan and the Kashmiri people.

The people also know that full normalization between India and Pakistan will come gradually in step with forward movement towards a final settlement of the Kashmir issue.

Meanwhile, they want their governments to take concrete steps for reduction of tensions and avoidance of conflict while building cooperative relationship in areas of mutual interest on the basis of sovereign equality, non-interference and mutual benefit.

Like India, Pakistan will soon have a technocrat prime minister whose priority will be to make Pakistan politically stable and economically strong. This vision will not be achieved without peace and stability in the region. India and Pakistan must now learn to live in peace with each other as good neighbours.

Both should capitalize on their geography and strategic location to build regional networks of gas and oil pipelines and an infrastructure of transport and communication that will bring immeasurable economic dividends to them.

Depending on progress in mutual confidence, they could also explore a "no-war treaty" with a mutually agreed mechanism for peaceful settlement of their outstanding disputes and creation of conditions free of violence and conflict which would enable both countries to fully devote their resources, both human and material, to improving the lives of their peoples, particularly the poorest among them.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Jamali's sins

It is difficult to remember a period in Pakistan's short and eventful history when there hasn't been a crisis. If it wasn't a case of men in uniform leaping into instant action, then it was a case of civilians, enlisting the help of other civilians, to ensure that no government could complete its term and no system should be allowed to work.

The essential difference is, of course, that the men in uniform have the clout, and one of them behaved as if he also has the authority of scripture. But the end result of it all is that nothing has really changed.

The country is once again in a crisis, which is nothing new. But this time the civilians are not to blame. The sudden resignation of Mr Zafarullah Khan Jamali will nevertheless remain something of a mystery, for the general perception is that he was, what the English refer to as, muddling through.

He was seen as a family man who threw his fishing line on the port side and didn't want to rock the boat. That is, until he decided one fine morning to assert himself.

One of the theories that has been aired in Punjab, the heartland of Pakistan, and which has started to flicker into view in other provinces, is that Mr Jamali was guilty of gross indiscretion.

He is supposed to have passed certain disparaging remarks against the national accountability bureau, which the president holds in high esteem. And his public utterance, that the issue of the uniform had been settled, while it temporarily stilled the barrage of questions hurled at him by a newspaperman at a press conference, probably sealed his fate.

While it might have been construed as an ambivalent statement, one which could have been taken either way, the president had no doubt about its meaning. It has also been alleged that Mr Jamali made an off-the-cuff remark to a confidant, which centred on the theme that once the president took off his uniform, he would be sorted out. This was the last straw.

It is now being seen that the undertaking to doff his uniform on December 31 was a ploy to get the MMA to give a collective nod to the passage of the controversial LFO and that the president never had any intention of addressing any sartorial changes which might have occurred.

In the long run this might be in the interest of the country, but it doesn't alter the feeling of uncertainty and deprivation that exists. Mr Jamali will soon be forgotten, and it is doubtful if too many people will miss him. There are more pressing matters engaging the attention of the policy makers.

Currently the whole machinery of government appears to be involved in ensuring that Mr Shaukat Aziz wins his National Assembly seat in the by-elections, either in Tharparkar or Attock, preferably in both constituencies. What makes the episode a little distasteful, however, is the way the Muslim League is setting about organizing the caucus.

Mr Shaukat Aziz, accompanied by the chief minister of Sindh, Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim, flew to Thar in the chief minister's official Cessna. And the prime minister, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, did his bit by addressing a huge public meeting in which he extolled the virtues of the man who has promised to turn the blighted region of Thar into an oasis of prosperity.

A few journalists in the crowd were curious to know why this generous gesture hadn't been made by the federal governments in the past, when the local people suffered abominably from droughts.

There appears to be such a great sense of urgency and desperation about getting Mr Aziz elected, that a newspaper wag suggested it might be because the president doesn't want to get stuck with Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain for longer than necessary, for fear of his coming up with a fresh string of jejeune sentiments like the one he uttered in a joint statement with the president about stamping out terrorism.

One wishes that Mr Aziz had been competing under different circumstances. He is urbane, suave, likable, modest, good at his work, and respected in financial circles abroad. He is also a man of independent financial means, and there is no scandal attached to his name. In a civilized country, he might have made a good prime minister. But Pakistan is not an easy country to govern.

To start with, Pakistan never had in its early years a prime minister like Jawaharlal Nehru who, in one fell swoop, took care of the feudal problem in his country. Instead, Pakistan has bred and continues to breed a succession of pirs, sardars, tamundars, khan sahibs, khan bahadurs, landlords and tribal chiefs, each of whom is a one-man fantasia to his people.

To complicate the issue, the retrogressive element in Pakistan, already deeply entrenched in the business class and the bureaucracy, has spread its tentacles into the ranks of the military, the police and certain sections of the clergy.

That is why when it was reported in this newspaper ten days ago that a 13-year old peasant girl was gang-raped by five men in Rahim Yar Khan, and the station house officer refused to register a first information report, nobody was surprised and nobody took the slightest notice. It was just another miserable statistics. Just another case of letting sleeping dogs lie.

There were no protests, no hunger strikes, no placard carrying demonstrators storming the local press club, no angry letters to the local editors. People have just lost the will to stand up and fight. They have lost faith in the system.

How nice it would have been if the governor or the chief minister of Pakistan's largest province, instead of continuously drivelling goodwill and worrying about things like the movement of wheat from one province to another, had, just this once, hauled the SHO over the coals and demanded that the culprits be caught and publicly whipped.

Does a victim have to be the daughter of an air commodore or the chief executive officer of a leading multinational, before the police is jolted into action? Or does, as a cynic pointed out to this writer, the matter have to be aired over CNN, Fox News, Sky News and the BBC before the president gets involved, as he did in the notorious Meerwalla case?

On July 6 the Sukkur circuit bench of the Sindh High Court put its foot down on the parallel justice system which operates in the country, and served notices to a provincial minister, zila nazim Sukkur and sardar of the Bulo tribe for holding a jirga to settle a tribal dispute. There appears to be a stirring in the political wind. All it needs is for an enlightened prime minister to ensure that the process continues.

Objectivity in news broadcasts

We are living in an era of 24-hour television news provided by an ever-growing host of local, regional and international broadcasters. In Pakistan alone, those with cable can have access to news from PTV, Geo, ARY, Indus, as well as CNN, Fox, BBC and Sky (not to mention the European-language channels).

The challenge in this ever-expanding news market, though, is to ensure that quality keeps pace with quantity: that the integrity and reliability of news broadcasting does not fall victim to the need to provide so much news.

What are the characteristics of a 'quality' news broadcast? Broadly speaking, to ensure that all important stories are covered; that the facts are presented as objectively, fully and impartially as possible; that analysis and commentary conveys all points of view and leaves the audience to make up its own mind; and - crucially - that news coverage does not propagate or promote a particular ideology, party or government.

These criteria are easily drawn up, but not often followed. Consider the major national and international news channels both here and abroad, and it becomes clear how few pass the test.

Domestic broadcasters fall at the first hurdle. Targeting a domestic audience, and often under strong ratings pressure, they naturally focus on stories that will interest their particular viewers.

National developments get covered, but international developments frequently fall victim to the ratings wars. News events that have immense international value simply get ignored or downplayed because they aren't of interest to domestic viewers. The US has a particularly poor record in this regard.

The result is what we are seeing today: an obvious 'dumbing down' of the news. A conflict involving hundreds of casualties in Africa typically gets far less coverage than, say, a teenage killer on the rampage in his local high school.

The job of a good news broadcaster is not just to reflect audience interest or preference and to take that as its determining factor in choosing which stories to cover, but to ensure that the audience is informed of all important events.

The media have a responsibility in terms of providing information and raising awareness. If people are not interested in the fact that thousands of people are dying in Africa, news channels must make them interested.

The BBC probably gets first place in this regard. Its domestic broadcasts, geared to British viewers, do place more emphasis on national stories but not at the expense of international news.

Its world service, meanwhile, cannot be faulted for the scope of its coverage. Everything - be it the US elections, a train explosion in North Korea, famine in Africa - is passed on to viewers.

Many local broadcasters, particularly in the developing world, also fail to provide quality news because of a lack of resources and capacity (the latter a consequence of the former).

It is important to remember here that international news reporting is an expensive proposition. The best kind of news coverage comes from reporters based in the countries where the event is taking place: permanent news bureaus are something only CNN, the BBC and a handful of others can afford.

The quality of news broadcasts by others - who simply do not have the budget and qualified personnel to report on stories half-way across the globe - inevitably suffers.

The scope of news coverage is important, but what really matters is the quality of that coverage. - whether or not facts are reported impartially and objectively. Watching a good news report, you should not come away thinking that you have heard just one side of the story. Such impartial, objective delivery of the facts is the hardest test for any news broadcaster.

Again it is the BBC that passes the test more often than any other news channel. The ultimate proof of this came, tragically, in the wake of Dr David Kelly's suicide and the Hutton Inquiry.

Listening to BBC reporters outlining the evidence given and later the conclusions drawn by Lord Hutton, and listening to commentators questioning the implications for the BBC's senior executives, one had to pinch oneself to remember that, in fact, the BBC was one of the parties in the dispute.

Its coverage of the Hutton Inquiry was so impartial and objective that it allowed the listener to forget that fact - quite an incredible achievement that probably no other news broadcaster could match.

Objectivity and impartiality are important because the flip side of these are subjectivity and partiality: in other words, propagating one particular viewpoint - a particular ideology, a particular party or a government - and denying viewers the opportunity to see all sides and make up their own mind.

Far too many news broadcasters - national and international - have an agenda: a particular viewpoint that they are trying to promote. This kind of partisan, one-sided reporting is notorious among state-controlled TV channels in the developing world.

They are often just a mouthpiece for the government, faithfully passing on its propaganda and what it wants people to hear. Look at PTV's coverage of the news and compare it with its commercial rivals.

On PTV you are far less likely to hear any criticism of the government. This phenomenon is not confined to the developing world, however. Italy, where most of the media is owned and controlled by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, exemplifies the same thing in a 'modern, developed world' context.

While the 'western' media is generally not state-controlled and presents independent viewpoints, the Iraq war was one issue on which most abandoned their impartiality and became too closely associated with the war-waging coalition.

Too many broadcasters at the time, especially those in America, were happy to report what the White House told them. They forgot the first job of a good news broadcaster: to check the facts.

American channels like CNN have been constrained by the patriotic fervour generated by 9/11 - a fervour that rendered any criticism of the administration un-American. Even now, US broadcasters are not challenging or questioning their government with anything like the intensity they at times revile foreign governments.

CNN is additionally pressured to conform by the ultra-patriotism of its rival Fox news channel. Fox clearly shares - indeed, often appears ahead of - the Bush administration in supporting the war on Iraq and terror. Its pro-war, pro-Bush agenda comes across in everything it says.

Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based channel that is gaining an increasing hold in the Arab world, is at the other extreme. If Fox is guilty of being unabashedly and unquestioningly pro-Bush, Al-Jazeera is the opposite of it where the US is concerned.

To varying extents Fox, CNN and Al-Jazeera have all stopped being pure news reporters and instead became propagandists - a fatal mistake as far as quality and objectivity are concerned.

In the TV and 24-hour news era, governments, terrorists and others are all too aware of the power of the media. While terrorists seek to exploit it to get their message of terror across, governments use it to promote their own agenda.

As seen, many news channels acquiesce in this - particularly in the case of the Iraq war. Those that do not are vulnerable to government attack and pressure. Being a 'quality' news channel is not easy. But it is a goal that all must keep striving to attain - for otherwise, we will be living in an era of 24-hour propaganda.

Democracy and governance

Recent political changes have inspired a national requiem lamenting the demise of "democracy" in the country. This raises a question: how can something die which was not "living"? What have we lost? Maybe just a pretence.

Democracy and governance lend themselves each to varying and often confusing definitions. And depending on the definition, the two concepts may or may not be seen as linked, as some authoritarian regimes may be providing what is believed to be "good governance" while some of the seemingly "democratic" systems may be failing in governance. How to escape this semantic trap?

Guided by genuine considerations I would venture to say that perhaps democracy is the form and governance is the substance. The form manifests itself in electoral democracy, sustained by a process of free and fair elections and peaceful and orderly change of government.

But that is not the whole story, because without substance democracy remains hollow. It must embody good governance to empower people, and it can do so only by resting on free institutions, representative government, constitutional liberalism, strong rule of law, and a just and equitable social order.

Otherwise, political power empowers only the dominant social groups and elite who appropriate state's resources for personal gain and strengthen their respective institutions laying a strong foundation for their political primacy and entrenchment. This certainly flies in the face of democratic values.

Democracy is a graded experience which nations acquire by hard work in schooling themselves in literacy and appropriate habits of thought, accommodation and tolerance, and by modernizing social structures with openness to such concepts as rights of man, people's sovereignty and humanistic values. It also involves harmonizing the tribal, ethnic, regional, religious and sectarian divisions, if any.

Two of the most potent instruments of fostering the desired change in the mindset and in dismantling regressive social institutions are education and economic change.

Economic change throws up a middle class who can lead the political action to change the balance of economic and political power thus creating an enabling environment for the expression and exercise of democratic rights.

Not all these qualities can be acquired at once. Progress in different areas does not move abreast. Advance in one accelerates progress in other areas ultimately forming vital tributaries to the democratic stream.

These changes come slowly and painfully and the process faces much resistance from the dominant social groups and the privileged elite which in our case have principally been feudalism and military, ruling through sub-elite groups such as bureaucracy much of which became parasitic over time. Democracy unfortunately is not solvent of these road blocks. In fact there is struggle for power between the two.

Ironically, the electoral democracy in Pakistan has not helped the liberals to play an important role in society. Instead, it has so far enabled feudal politicians to come into power which has strengthened feudalism in the country. As a result, feudal lords' capacity to exploit the peasants has enhanced over the years.

And the military rule helped the armed forces keep the security issue at the centre of national agenda. The military government sought its legitimacy from its claim of being the guardian of nation's ideology, defender of national honour and security and champion of the Kashmir cause.

In a larger context, religion, national security and foreign policy, whether it was US-Pakistan relations, threat from India, Kashmir dispute, Soviet inspired Afghan hostility and subversion, were rolled into one and came to reflect as well as affect Pakistan's political process and social order.

The sense of national aims and direction yielded to passions and empty slogans. Politics became suffused with cant, hypocrisy and fraud. And both democracy and governance suffered.

The institutions became handmaiden of personal power and economic potential and material resources of the country were subordinated either to needs of political survival or personal rapacity. The gamekeepers turned poachers.

As the institutions crumbled or were undermined it weakened the rule of law and social stability which were preyed on by forces of extremism, many of whom were fostered by government support or patronage, and criminal elements.

The state lacked the political will, moral authority and effective instruments of law and order. The worst affected were weak and the vulnerable strata of society who lacked both physical and economic security.

Over the years it generated enormous amount of frustration and anger in the country in every segment of society. The liberal intelligentsia protested in the name of freedom and progress, and the weak and vulnerable masses could do no more than despair and contemplate extreme and illusionary avenues to empowerment swayed by ideologues, demagogues and political opportunists.

The military intervention from time to time was helpful in the damage control, but in due course went on to inflict damage of its own specially to the political process.

If economically the military appeared to have done better than the civilian rule it owed largely to the fact that invariably their coming to power coincided with an enhanced relationship with the US and upgradation of the aid relationship which helped the country to tide over the financial fallout of poor governance by the civilians.

Military's accession to power and the strengthening of US-Pakistan aid relationship was more than a coincidence. In the background was always a critical foreign policy issue affecting the US interests.

Arguably Pakistan in its entire history received more aid during the military rule than the civilian. But there was a pay off: it helped the military to maintain its political profile.

Though Pakistan suffered from poor leadership for much of its history, the nation seems to have a great resilience, a strong will to survive, and a faith-based sense of optimism and exceptionalism, underpinned by its hard working masses and a tiny, but still functional, liberal, modernized and highly educated intelligentsia, at home and abroad, all of which helped to keep the country afloat.

Given the enormity of the self-inflicted damage to the country even survival has been a great achievement. Now with an all pervasive malaise in Pakistan's body politic and the complexity and the range of social and economic problems it faces it is a legitimate question to ask where you begin to put things back in order.

You have here many imperfect choices and overlapping priorities - democracy, social change and political reform, economic development and modernization of society?

Can opting for free and unfettered democracy over other choices, which may require some degree of authoritarian measures, help eventually achieve other objectives.

Or is there a risk? On one hand unrestrained political process may cause disorder and instability in a country badly fragmented and damaged by forces of radicalism and long years of mismanagement, authoritarian rule and fraudulent political process? And on the other, with the level of illiteracy being what it is, the overwhelming proportion of the population living in rural or tribal areas tied to the land under the stranglehold of feudalism and tribalism may continue to be swayed by the landlord, the religious demagogue or the populist? We may thus see same faces in the assemblies who have been rotating in and out of government.

Thus both scenarios may defeat the ends of democracy. The best option for the country was to have persisted with the democratic dispensation, however imperfect, from the beginning of its history.

That unfortunately did not happen and the country has accumulated multiple and mounting problems. Unattended problems have become crises and need an emergency treatment - a critical care if you may call it.

If President Musharraf realizes the enormity of the challenge and wants to do something about it, let him try. After all the military having been part of the problem may have to be now part of the solution.

What is important however is that the president should not be given a blank cheque nor an open-ended mandate. Let him set a deadline for the full restoration of democracy - two years from now perhaps. In this period let Mr Shaukat Aziz concentrate on the economy and education, which will help bring social change, with attendant political dividends.

I am sure he will do well. The president should focus on larger political issues by actually practising "enlightened moderation" with the liberalization and civilianizing of social institutions and the political process.

He should perhaps set up a commission composed of men of character, intellect and integrity, who should hold hearings in the country with political leaders, tribal elders, religious scholars, academics, journalists and bureaucrats to analyze the country's problems, and search for their solution in a larger and long term democratic context.

No politicians should be excluded, in the country or abroad. Let this be an exercise in "truth and reconciliation," if I may borrow this expression. From these consultations a new consensus must emerge about the vision of nation's future embracing among other things empowerment of smaller provinces, and the restoration of 1973 Constitution.

The process should culminate in early elections, let us say towards the end of 2006. Hopefully by then some social change and political reform will bring to power a new generation of politicians.

If the president does that he will have truly played an historical role. Otherwise he will continue to be dogged by opposition and questions of legitimacy, which will be neither good for the country nor for him however well intentioned he may be.

The writer is a former ambassador.